'There is something in flax, for no priest would anoint you without a bit of tow. And if a woman that was carrying was to put a basket of green flax on her back, the child would go from her; and if a mare that was in foal had a load of flax on her, the foal would go the same way.'
And a neighbour of hers confirms this, and says: 'There's something in green flax, I know; for my mother often told me about one night she was spinning flax before she was married, and she was up late. And a man of the fairies came in—she had no right to be sitting up so late: they don't like that—and he told her it was time to go to bed; for he wanted to kill her, and he couldn't touch her while she was handling the flax. And every time he'd tell her to go to bed, she'd give him some answer, and she'd go on pulling a thread of the flax, or mending a broken one; for she was wise, and she knew that at the crowing of the cock he'd have to go. So at last the cock crowed, and she was safe, for the cock is blessed.'
Old Bridget Ruane will not do any more cures by charms or by simples, or 'bring children home to the world' any more. For she died last winter; and we may be sure that among the green herbs that cover her grave, there are some that are 'good for every bone in the body,' and that are 'very good for a sore heart.'
1900.
THE WANDERING TRIBE
When poor Paul Ruttledge made his great effort to escape from the doorsteps of law and order—from the world, the flesh, and the newspaper—and fell among tinkers, I looked with more interest than before at the little camps that one sees every now and then by the roadside for a few days or weeks. And I wondered why our country people—who are so kind to one another, and to tramps and beggars, that they seem to live by the rule of an old woman in a Galway sweet-shop: 'Refuse not any, for one may be the Christ'—speak of a visit of the tinkers as of frost in spring or blight in harvest. I asked why they were shunned as other wayfarers are not, and I was told of their strange customs and of their unbelief.
'They come mostly from the County Mayo,' I am told; 'and, indeed, they have not much religion; but last year Father Prendergast offered to marry a man and woman of them for nothing. But after he had them married, they made him give them a shilling for a lodging.